Usha Sundaram

Usha Sundaram (6 April 2010) was an Indian pilot and animal rights activist. She was the first female pilot of post-independence India.

Early life Sundaram was born Usha Krishnamurthi/Krishnamoorthy in to Kamakshi and T. S. Krishnamurthi. She married her husband, V. Sundaram, a commercial pilot and an aviation instructor at the Madras Flying Club, in July 1941. The couple moved to Bangalore in southern India in 1946 and lived in a small bungalow on the city's St. Mark's Road, before returning to Madras (present day Chennai) in the late 1950s. She was independent India's first woman pilot.

Sundaram started as a co-pilot to her husband, flying many leaders of the newly-independent India including Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Rajendra Prasad. When her husband took up administrative duties with the then Tata Airlines, Sundaram continued as Nehru's pilot. She also flew the then home minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel on the Maharaja of Mysore's Dakota aircraft, when Patel was traveling on his missions toward reunification of the princely states with India.

Along with her husband, she set a speed record for piloting a piston-engine aircraft between England and India in 27 hours. The couple had been recruited by the Government of Madras to fly a newly purchased De Havilland Dove from England to India. In 1951, the couple went by ship to England and returned flying the piston-engined plane in a journey lasting 27 hours with stops in Paris, Baghdad, Karachi, and Bombay, before reaching Madras. This record still stands, as of 2020. The couple continued to fly recreationally until 1996.